Treasure Box Read online

  Quentin sat down and looked around a little. The office was meticulously clean, despite the tattiness of it. And contrary to what Bolt had said on the phone, his desk had only a few papers on it.

  "Looks like you're all caught up with your work," Quentin said.

  "We're doing OK for the middle of a crime wave."

  "Chief Bolt, I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions."

  "Really? Just a couple? Couldn't you phone?"

  "I figured fair was fair, and you'd have some questions to ask me."

  "Still, there's a phone. Why are you here?"

  "Because when I get the answers to my questions, I want to be able to act on them immediately."

  Bolt nodded. "I always feel that way, too. Found your wife yet?"

  "As a matter of fact, I saw her last night. She's not missing anymore."

  Bolt nodded more slowly. "Well, good. Why didn't she come along?"

  "I didn't say she was back with me. Just that she wasn't missing."

  Bolt sighed and recited:

  The ways of love are strange and hard:

  The love you want is always barred;

  The love you have you want to change.

  The ways of love are hard and strange.

  "I didn't want to change my love," said Quentin.

  "Did you like the poem? I wrote it."

  "Did you? I thought I'd heard it before."

  "Yeah, well, that's why I'm working in a police department in Mixinack instead of being lionized in the New York literary scene."

  "You want to hear my questions?"

  "I'm all ears."

  "Where is Anna Laurent Tyler?"

  "In a rest home."

  "And where is that rest home?"

  Bolt nodded slowly. "Well, now, what are you going to do when you locate it?

  "Go see her."

  "Won't do you any good," said Bolt.

  "You don't know what I want to say to her."

  "I don't care if you want to sing her the 'Anvil Chorus'."

  "I hope you know the tenor part," said Quentin.

  "She's pretty much a vegetable, son," said Bolt. "So you can talk to her all you want, but I don't see how it'll do you much good."

  Quentin felt as if the air had been knocked out of his chest. "Can't be," he said.

  "Can so," said the chief. "Well, look at that. The word that crosses angst at the N is anvil. And I just said anvil a minute ago. Can you believe that?"

  "Just one of the many marvels of an afternoon in Mixinack."

  "You still want to see her?"

  "I can find out where she is eventually, but instead of making me have my investigators call every licensed rest home in the state, why not just tell me?"

  "Better than that. I'll take you."

  "In a police car? Will you flash the lights and run the siren?"

  "In your car. You think I'm going to use up part of my monthly mileage on giving a rich man a free ride?"

  "When can you go?"

  "Now," said Bolt, pushing back from his desk. "I haven't had lunch. You like chili?"

  "No." Quentin followed him out into the hall.

  "That's cause you haven't had Bella's chili. Is that really the coat you came in?"

  "Yes."

  "Nobody told you it was winter?"

  "I don't plan to hike around outside a lot."

  "In the north, in the winter, you should always dress as if you were going to have to walk home ten miles in a blizzard from a car stuck in a drift."

  "That's how my driver should dress. I should dress for sitting in the limo drinking champagne while I wait for him to get back with help."

  By now they were outside. Quentin led the way to his Taurus.

  "Oh, I see," said Bolt. "That was a joke. You don't have a driver."

  "You don't have a coat, either."

  "Man, I must be stupid," said Bolt.

  Since snow was falling steadily now, he had a point.

  They came out of the parking lot and Bolt directed him until he was heading south on the two-lane road that led past the Laurent house. Quentin realized at once that they weren't heading for the rest home at all. Sure enough, when they got to the half-hidden driveway Bolt directed him to turn left and go on in.

  "I see quite a few new tire tracks since I was here last," said Quentin.

  "Yeah, they're all mine," said Bolt. "Had to come here and take pictures of the footprints before they got covered."

  "Oh," said Quentin. "Evidence?"

  "Definitely. I just don't know what it's evidence of. Now that your wife is back in the land of the living."

  "If you can call it living," said Quentin. "A joke."

  "I got it. First time I heard that, it was Andy Devine in some cavalry movie. Or maybe it was Rin Tin Tin on TV when I was a kid. Was he in that?"

  "Before my time," said Quentin.

  They got out of the car and Quentin dutifully tagged along up to the front door.

  "Hope you don't mind the detour," said Bolt.

  "I kind of expected it," said Quentin.

  "Just wanted you to walk me through what you did the night you spent here."

  "Do I need an attorney?"

  "Don't you have one?"

  "I meant with me."

  "I'm not going to arrest you for trespass, Mr. Fears. Therefore you have no need for an attorney."

  "Am I really that stupid-looking?"

  "Humor me, Mr. Fears."

  They were standing in the middle of the entry hall. Quentin looked at the fireplace but didn't see any talking rats. The door to the parlor had no writing on it. And the chief was a strong man with a pistol. All of this made Quentin feel much better about being in this room again.

  "I never saw this room till I came to see Mrs. Tyler off to the rest home," said Bolt.

  "Bet it was cleaner then."

  "Much. The glaziers are supposed to have come this morning to fix the window in the library. It was broken, you know."

  "I know."

  "I used to come to the back door all the time. Downstairs. There's a ramp going down to the kitchen. Toolrooms are down there, too."

  "You used to work here?"

  "As a kid. Started helping out with weeding when I was little. That was before chemicals, so keeping the dandelions out of the lawns kept about a dozen of us kids in movie money all summer. But I kept hanging around, ended up mowing lawns and then I made gardener's assistant. That's how I put myself through college. Shoveled snow off that front porch out there so many times I hate to remember."

  "So this house is more than just a neighbor's place to you."

  "Had my first kiss here," said Bolt, sighing. "Come on downstairs, I'm curious about what you did in the kitchen."

  Quentin followed him. Bolt flipped on lightswitches as he went.

  "Lights are on now?" Quentin asked.

  "Guess so," said Bolt. "I had them turned on yesterday. I wanted to see more than a flashlight could show me."

  With the lights on, the stairs and hall looked to Quentin just as they had the night Madeleine led him down for a midnight snack. But the kitchen didn't. Quentin had distinctly remembered a table. Instead, there was a spot on the floor where someone had apparently sat down on the filthy linoleum.

  "You walked in here—in the dark, or with a flashlight," said Bolt. "You went to the fridge, to those cupboards. But the fridge is locked shut, as you might notice, and nobody's opened it. So why walk there? Twice—see? Twice."

  Quentin remembered getting out mustard, mayo, a couple of sliced meats, and a head of lettuce. Then going back for pickles when Mad asked for one.

  "They used to keep bread in this cupboard," said Bolt. "And sure enough, here's where you walked. To the bread cupboard, and then to the silverware drawer. See? Only... no bread, no silverware."

  He opened the empty drawer, the empty cupboard.

  "Bummer," said Quentin.

  "Then you sit down on the floor. But... right where the kitchen table u
sed to be. Right where the chair at the head of the table used to be. Butler used to have the undisputed right to sit in that chair. The cook made damn sure nobody else—least of all a sweaty gardener's assistant—sat in it."

  "Got to keep that furniture clean."

  "Why did you sit on this floor, Mr. Fears? And what did you find in those cupboards?"

  Quentin shrugged.

  "Now, see, there we are," said Bolt. "You want me to answer your questions, but you won't give me tit for tat."

  "Why give you answers you won't believe?"

  "Well, answers I don't believe would be a step forward. Because right now what I don't believe is that you saw your wife alive yesterday."

  Quentin shook his head. "When you watched all those old Columbo episodes, didn't you notice that he always had a dead body before he started the murder investigation?"

  "I didn't say murder," said Bolt.

  "You said you didn't think I saw my wife alive yesterday. And I tell you she was as alive as she ever was."

  Bolt kept opening cupboards until they were all open. Then he hitched himself up to sit on one of the grimy counters. "This is where I had my first kiss. This room. I was sitting on this counter."

  "The cook?" asked Quentin.

  "The owner's daughter. Rowena Tyler."

  "How old?" asked Quentin.

  "Who?" He must have startled the chief out of a reverie.

  "Rowena. You."

  "I was twenty-two. And don't ask why it was my first kiss at that age."

  "My first kiss came later than that, Chief," said Quentin.

  "She was fifteen."

  "So were you her first kiss too?"

  "I didn't ask. Judging from the chasteness of the kiss, I'd say yes. And thanks for not saying some smart remark about robbing the cradle."

  "I was just thinking that it's sort of a young-adult version of Lady Chatterley's Lover."

  "Never read it. Sounded boring compared to the True Confessions magazines my friends and I snuck over and read in the pharmacy when we were twelve."

  "So this room is full of memories for you."

  "Rowena's about your age now, wherever she is."

  "Never met her, I'm afraid."

  "She married and left before she was twenty. I think Mrs. Tyler knew that something had passed between us, because for the first couple of years she didn't ever mention Rowena in front of me. And then one day she did, and I didn't flinch, and then she kept me posted about her. She had a child, a daughter, in 1984. She's going to turn twelve this year."

  "The woman I married was older than that."

  "But younger than Rowena."

  "Definitely."

  "Help me with this, Mr. Fears."

  "See, here's where we're running into our conflict, Chief. You seem to think I understand what happened here, and that I'm just not telling you."

  "Aren't these your footprints?"

  "I'm willing to bet they are."

  "And your buttprint on the floor?"

  "Wouldn't be surprised."

  "That stairway is pitch black, day or night, when the power's off."

  "If you say so."

  "But your prints are surefooted."

  "Flashlight?"

  "And the driver says that when he dropped you and your wife off out in front, the lights were on and a servant was waiting to take Mrs. Fears's bags."

  "Odd what details will stick in a person's mind."

  "And the servant knew her. Called her by name."

  "No, he got it wrong," said Quentin. "He called her by her maiden name, Cryer."

  "Tyler."

  "Cryer."

  "That's what he said, too. Amazing, don't you think?"

  "I hoped maybe he'd remember."

  "Lights on all over the house," said Bolt.

  "Well, not all over. A few windows."

  "Not possible," said Bolt.

  "What a liar that driver is."

  "Did you get to him first?"

  "And bribe him to tell you a story that is so obviously false? Boy am I dumb!"

  Bolt shook his head. "This family matters to me, and you're doing something here and I really, really want to know what it is because even though the old lady is about as alert as a lawn these days, I owe her. More than that—I like her. She's a friend. And when she dies, this house will go to Rowena. And her I more than liked. Even if I couldn't give her what she wanted most."

  "What was that?"

  "A way out of Mixinack."

  Quentin nodded. "Small-town blues."

  "Yeah, well, I'm a small-town guy. Small-town dreams. I told her I'd go to the city with her but she said, 'And do what?' and I didn't have an answer for her."

  "They have cops down there, too."

  "Yeah, but the cops down there work for a living. And I wasn't a cop then, remember? I was a gardener's assistant."

  "Starcrossed lovers."

  "My point, Mr. Fears, is that you look like some kind of computer nerd and I'm a really strong guy and unless I know that you aren't going to hurt these people with your millions of dollars and your private investigators and your lawyers, well, I'm going to beat the shit out of you right here in this kitchen."

  "Actually, I was kind of hoping you could protect me from them."

  "These are good people, you rich lying asshole."

  "Chief, I know you won't believe the truth if I tell you, and you obviously won't accept my silence, so you just tell me the lie that you'll believe and I'll say it. Whatever it takes to keep from getting beaten up."

  "You think I won't do it? You think just because I know you'll come down on me afterward with every lawyer in the known world, I won't do it?"

  "Oh, sure, maybe you'll do it, maybe you won't. If you decide to do it, I'll just stand here until you knock me down. I won't raise a hand against you because you're an officer of the law and besides, I've never raised my hand in violence against another person in my life."

  "What are you, a Quaker?"

  "A wimp," said Quentin. "Come on, Chief Bolt, I like you and you like me. I understand why you're threatening me but I'm not going to tell you stuff that I know will just make you madder. I'll accept how mad you are right now. I think if you beat me up when you're only this mad, I'll live through it without needing serious surgery."

  The chief slid off the counter and took a step toward Quentin. He didn't flinch, though the chief's threats did scare him. Quentin had never been beaten up. He had, however, seen the Rodney King tape.

  But Chief Bolt didn't hit him. Instead he slammed all the cupboard doors shut and kicked the fridge. Then he stood with his forehead pressing against the door of the freezer compartment.

  "Chief," said Quentin, "thanks for not hitting me."

  "You're welcome," said Chief Bolt. "It's not you I'm angry at."

  "I figured that, since I'm such a nice guy."

  "This place really screwed up my life. I should be happy. I've got a good job, a good wife, and some good kids. But I come back in here and it all comes pouring back over me. And I want to hurt somebody."

  "I know the feeling."

  "Do you? No, the real question—did you?"

  "Chief Bolt, I don't know for sure who Madeleine is. But I do know that when I came here the other night, a servant met us outside in the drive, and the lights were on. Mad and I came down to this kitchen and sat at the table. I was at the head of the table, and she was beside me on the right."

  "Housekeeper's chair."

  "And we made sandwiches. My second trip to the fridge was for pickles."

  Bolt reached down and snapped the lock open—it hadn't been fully engaged, apparently. He yanked open the refrigerator door. "Show me the pickles, Mr. Fears!"

  The refrigerator didn't even have shelves.

  "They tasted very good," said Quentin. "But the next day, after my wife disappeared, I was as hungry as if I had come down in the dark, sat on the floor, and eaten nothing but my imagination."

  Bolt shook his head.


  "Chief, after my wife left me, I saw this house as you see it right now. Not the kitchen, of course. The stairs were too dark to get down without a flashlight, and I didn't have one. But while she was with me, there were lights. There was food. Furniture. Everything clean and elegant. We sat down to breakfast—even though it was lunchtime—we ate in the library. No broken window. And eight of us at table. Grandmother—that's all that Madeleine ever called her—and... let's see if I can remember... me and Mad, of course, and then Uncle Stephen, Aunt Athena—no, her real name was Minerva—and Simon and Cousin Jude and Uncle Paul."

  "Paul?" asked Chief Bolt. His voice sounded different. "There was a Paul who lived here."

  "You know him?"

  "I saw him a couple of times when I was a child. At the town Christmas party. The Easter egg hunt on the lawn out front."

  "Really? What was he like?"

  "Short," said the chief. "He was a toddler. He died when he was about a year and a half old."

  "Must not be the same Paul," said Quentin.

  "You went out to the graveyard," said the chief. "Let's go out there again. Let's look around."

  "You got the heat turned on out there?" But the chief was already heading up the stairs. Quentin followed.

  The snow was big flakes now, a Christmasy kind of snow instead of the nasty drizzly snow that had been falling earlier. All the old footprints were gone. But the chief seemed to have memorized Quentin's route through the graveyard.

  "like you're trying to catch someone at first, big strides," said Bolt. "And then you see there's nobody in here and you have to see if there's any other way out, or if they climbed over the fence—am I right?"

  "Dead on."

  "And then you start looking at the headstones. I checked every single one you stopped at. Simon, Minerva, Jude, Stephen."

  "I noticed the coincidence," said Quentin. "But the dates were impossible."

  "See this one?" He pointed out the grave of the infant Paul who had died at the age of a year and a half.

  "Yeah, I saw it," said Quentin.

  "Paul was Rowena's brother. She never knew him, though. He was older, and he died a couple of years before she was born. But she came here a lot, to look at his grave."

  "Grim," said Quentin.

  "After I kissed her that time, after she was sure I was in love with her, she told me a secret. The reason why she wanted to get away from this house."